Thoughts on Today’s Massacre

Today, another mass shooting took place in the United States– just a few hours from where I live. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families, just as my thoughts and prayers were with all those massacred at Sandy Hook, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Columbine, and those massacred in recent years by the U.S. military in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia– or Palestinians massacred by Israel with U.S. weapons.

Today, the President of the United States appeared on television and spoke from a position of incapacity. If the President can’t do a single concrete thing in the face of powerful interest groups and opposition from Congress– then I am certain that anything that I mention in this blog post, on the subject of political or legislative prescriptions to remedy the epidemic, is a waste of words.

Our grade schools, high schools, colleges, universities, churches, and movie theatres have been viciously shot up. A grade school?! Little children in the place where they are supposed to be safe and protected and nurtured, were…I don’t need to repeat it, and yet nobody did anything at all but just talk…blah blah blah. Yet even talking– those that talked too loudly in the media, for example Piers Morgan on CNN– were suddenly not there anymore.

It doesn’t take much insight to figure out that, at its root, this is not a legislative problem, rather a cultural one. And the latter is much harder to fix than the former. The United States has a deep-seated flaw, and this epidemic is one of its latest manifestations. Perhaps, strict gun control (which I do support) could help prevent some of these tragedies– but the underlying problem, left alone, will remain, and sadly strike again. Until our media and our government’s policies change in regard to respecting life at all its stages– at home and abroad– nothing is likely to change. Until our education system works to promote peace, understanding, and critical thinking, nothing is likely to change. And until we prioritize real family values and reject a perverse tendency in this society to permit everything and anything in the name of progress, tragically, nothing is likely to change.

The ultimate goal should not be to “restrict” the rights of people— but rather to get to a place where masses of people no longer get satisfaction from owning a death contraption. We are a long way off from that. In the meantime, since people are dying and too many Americans have demonstrated they are incapable of living in society with weapons and not slaughtering one another other with them, citizens are going to have to eventually quit their moaning about unrestricted access to guns and take one for the team– your country! This is necessary to make an attempt to save some lives. If they don’t, and do nothing, like a group of turkeys standing in the rain ten feet from shelter– then tragedy will repeat itself over and over.

On the other hand, those favoring gun proliferation want us to all be armed so we can have a wild west gun-toting situation. They want a society where everyone brings guns to work, school, the mall, and church, and if anybody draws their weapon– you just have to be faster. In other words, little Timmy at daycare can’t do finger-painting, he has to work on drawing his pistol faster so he can stay alive in America.

Dr. Aranas has analyzed this complex problematic with an exceptional presentation of philosophical, moral, historical, legal, strategic, and political examples, based on an outstanding knowledge of theory and practice.

-- Ambassador André Lewin, Former Spokesman for the U.N. Secretary General

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